Folklore show “Lo Que se Baila”
Performed by Curubandá Group, July 9, 7 p.m., Spanish Cultural Center, Av.13, Ca. 31. Info: 2257-2919, ext. 118.

Classic guitar concert
By Ricardo Fonseca, July 9, 7 p.m., Grano de Oro Restaurant, Ca. 30, Av. 2/4. Info: 2255-3322.

“Organic Agriculture as a Conservation Alternative”
Seminar, July 9, 7 a.m.- 4:30 p.m., Earth University, Guácimo, Limón. Info: 2713-0157, 2713-0000, ext. 3401.

A team of pollsters began visiting houses across the country this week to gather data on income, employment, crime, and access to technology and social programs.

The National Statistics and Census Institute (INEC) will present the results of its annual Household Survey Oct. 31, after collecting information from 14,000 households in 79 of the country's 81 cantons.

Last year's survey made a splash, showing the biggest one-year drop in poverty in 13 years. Poverty levels sank to 16.7 percent from 20.2 percent in 2006, while unemployment dropped to 4.6 percent from 6 percent in 2006. INEC researchers said President Oscar Arias' social programs partly explained the decreases, and Arias often mentions the figures as one of his central achievements.

Some political analysts say poverty will likely increase this year due to surging food and gas prices. Arias recently told the daily La Nación that he feared as much.

A family qualifies as "poor,” according to INEC researchers, if it cannot afford a “basket” (canasta basica) of 45 foods plus basic living expenses such as housing, education and clothing. Still, INEC has not modified its list of necessities since 1988, even though eating and living habits have changed.

Elizabeth Solano, the survey's director, said the list will be changed in 2009 – a promise the institute has been making for years.   

Solano said researchers are going slow to make sure the changes are sound: A change in the way poverty is measured would be controversial because it will affect the survey's outcome, she added.

One of Nicaragua's top human-rights leaders claims he is the latest victim of the Sandinista government's political witch-hunt to eliminate the opposition.

Marcos Carmona, director of Nicaragua's Permanent Commission on Human Rights (CPDH), told The Nica Times yesterday that an attempt to arrest him on “invented” charges Tuesday morning is “very suspicious” and smells of political revenge.

Carmona said police officers showed up at his house at 5:40 a.m. with an arrest warrant. They reportedly told him that he was wanted for assaulting two police officers. However, the police refused to show Carmona the warrant or search order, so the human-rights lawyer refused to cooperate with the arrest.

“This situation is political, not legal,” Carmona said, stressing he's never physically or verbally assaulted any police officers.

Instead, Carmona went on his own to the police station and to the courthouse to find out what was going on. But in both cases the authorities refused to meet with him or show him the file against him.

“I still haven't had access to the file and don't know what it says,” Carmona said, adding that today he will file a motion demanding to see his file and the accusation against him. He will also file a motion to revoke the arrest warrant against him, which he claims is illegal since he's never been accused of anything.

Carmona did, however, find out that his accusation was allegedly processed Monday at midnight – an hour, he says, when no one in the court is supposed to be working.

Carmona, who was instrumental in presenting the 2006 indigenous case accusing President Daniel Ortega of crimes against humanity, has maintained a very critical stance against Ortega's Sandinista government and acknowledges that he has a lot of political enemies. Most recently, Carmona has called the newly elected Supreme Court magistrates incompetent political cronies, and has criticized the Supreme Electoral Council's decision to eliminate minority parties from the upcoming municipal elections.

Carmona is not the only opposition voice suddenly facing possible arrest orders. The state prosecutor's office on Monday filed a criminal accusation against 39 former government officials and bankers – including opposition leader Eduardo Montealgre and newspaper publisher Jaime Chamorro, of the leading opposition daily La Prensa – for their alleged role in a banking scandal known as the “Cenis” case. The state prosecutor is requesting the judge put the 39 accused under a preventive house arrest.

Carmona, meanwhile, says the recent attempts to jail opposition leaders are akin to the Sandinista tactics in the 1980s.

“Unfortunately, the (institutional integrity) of the country is lost,” Carmona said. “Now they don't have to make people disappear. Now they can do it ‘legally' by inventing anything they want.”

See this Friday's Nica Times print edition for more on the Cenis case and problems with Nicaragua's institutional democracy.

Costa Rican officials announced they are not satisfied with the market opening proposal issued by the European Union (EU) prior to the beginning of the fourth round of negotiations for an eventual EU-Central America agreement. Costa Rican trade officials stated that they “do no perceive an interest on the part of the Europeans to advance the process.”

The association agreement is based on the pillars of political dialogue, cooperation and free trade. Negotiations began in October of last year. The fourth round of negotiations will take place on July 14-18 in Brussels, Belgium.

While he did not go into detail on the contents of the EU's proposal, Marco Vinicio Ruiz, Costa Rica's foreign trade minister, noted that it fails to substantially improve upon the region's current level of access.

Currently, under Generalized System of Preferences Plus (SGP-PLUS), a unilateral trade preference scheme, 90 percent of the region's exports to the EU enter duty-free. However, the region's negotiators are looking to expand access for sensitive products excluded from SGP-Plus, most notably bananas and sugar.

Bruno Stagno, Costa Rica's foreign minister, shared Ruiz's assessment of the matter. “We don't feel there is a strategic interest on the part of the Europeans to close the negotiations.”

Ruiz said Central America is interested in a fast negotiation that would conclude during the first semester of next year. For that reason, Central America's proposal offered to liberalize 80 percent of European exports to the region immediately after the agreement goes into effect.

“I am very pleased because Central America has done its homework,” he said. “We have sent the EU an offer that shows that we want the agreement.”

In addition to market access, during the negotiation round Central America and the EU will discuss sanitary norms, technical barriers to trade, competition policy and services liberalization, said Roberto Echandi, the region's head negotiator.